


Both of Us Above

by returntosaturn



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: AU, F/M, Newt-centric, magical au, speakeasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-03
Updated: 2017-04-15
Packaged: 2018-10-14 14:52:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10538730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/returntosaturn/pseuds/returntosaturn
Summary: He looks up at her, blinks wildly. She’s grinning like she knows a secret he isn’t privy to."S-sorry. Would you...?"He swallows. He has never asked this particular question. Not in many, many years."That is...would you care to dance?"// Queenie and Tina are singers at a certain speakeasy. Jacob and Newt are enraptured. AU.





	1. Chapter 1

She’s beautiful.

It is his first thought when she precedes her sister from behind the curtain, each dressed in short things that can hardly be called dresses, glimmering like a pair of jewels in the dim barlight.

He hears Jacob’s audible intake of breath beside him as they take their places, and glances to him to see him slack jawed, mouth formed into a moustache-framed ‘O’ and his eyes trained on the blonde in pink.

“Would’ya look at that?” he whispers dazedly, giving Newt a nudge as the brunette waves a signal to the band and they begin. The crowd—mostly comprised of men—that has been cheering and whistling since the Goldstein duo was announced, quiets to a hush.

“Yes,” Newt whispers involuntarily, and Jacob grunts, offended.

“No, no, not her. The brunette,” he hisses in defense and is silent, pink-cheeked now though there’s no need to be ashamed of the admission, for his companion is already enchanted once more by the blonde, who has started off the first verse of their sultry little ballad.

He settles in his seat, fidgeting the glass of Firewhiskey neat before him, just as entranced with what is happening on stage as every other man in this tight cellar, but as he always finds, possibly for entirely different reasons.

She sings harmony to her sister, and is clearly the reserved one, setting her focus to the band stage left of them rather than engaging the crowd the way her sister does with little winks and pouts of her lips. She gazes out at them once a twice, but never for a maintained period of time, and her hands stay wound together at her middle, self-conscious and trying to hide it. She isn’t the lead, and she doesn’t try to be. She’s does perfectly well in her own right, and adds what’s needed to the song to leave their admirers fawning and swarming to offer drinks and dances and any other manner of things whispered in ears after they finish.

She’s polite enough, and nods and smiles and even flashes a saucy smile or two to men that line up like dogs to a butcher.

He loses sight of her in the crowd, and to his horror finds that he’s lost Jacob as well, until he hears his telltale laughing hiccup and the blonde’s echoing giggle somewhere in the roar of the place.

Out of place and ultimately weary with the atmosphere, he shuffles to the bar for another drink, and there she is, that costume that hardly passes for a dress hiked to her mid-thigh, the edge of her sheer stockings peeking out and he gawks.

She’s swirling a shot of Gigglewater, expression trained and serious, warning anybody that might try to approach her that she is most certainly off-duty and off-limits.

He glances around for Jacob, and finds him teetering over with the blonde on his arm.

“Oh, Teenie, there you are. This is Jacob.”

The couple sits in the space between Newt and the brunette. 

“Nice to meet you, Mr. No-Maj,” the woman quips dryly, and Newt’s ears burn. 

“Wha--? I’m sorry, how did you…” Jacob starts.

She shrugs. “Just do. You can’t hold your Gigglewater. That laugh of yours can be heard miles away. I’m surprised MACUSA hasn’t been tipped off already.”

Jacob gapes, snapping his mouth open and closed several times before the blonde takes over. “Ooh. I ain’t never talked to a No-Maj before,” she croons, leaning into his shoulder.

The other woman rolls her eyes. “Don’t go gettin’ attached, Queenie.”

Queenie pouts, then perks with the strike of a new idea. She reaches around, and as if on cue a House Elf behind the bar slides her a shot. She sips artfully and gives a loud, bubbly laugh, leaving the rest of the glass unfinished. Then she turns to Jacob, Newt’s only saving grace in this loud cacophony of a place, and says, "I think you and I should dance."

The two trot off again, and the space between him and the slim, sulking brunette is vacant again. She raises her gaze to him, and he draws back, realizing he’s staring.

He blinks, hand searching for his glass before finding it and taking a long, fortifying pull.

He grows impossibly warm, and maybe, just maybe filled with a bit of liquid courage, and lifts his eyes back to her.

She’s still watching, her gaze now curious.

“Bold move, bringing your No-Maj friend here,” she says, dropping her eyes to watch her fingers scratch a line in the wood grain.

He has to take another sip before he can answer. “He’s an old friend. We met in the war.”  
She nods to herself. “Dangerous, having No-Maj friends these days. Dangerous being a foreigner, too. What are you, a sailor on leave?”

He laughs at his, a chuckle bit out between his lips. “No. Not a sailor. A traveller.”

“Oh.” Maybe she sounds interested. Maybe it’s the alcohol fizzing his brain.

Her dark eyes watch him openly, and when he makes to duck his head, she follows. She doesn’t let him hide. She’s stunning, curves and lines and dark eyes that reflect the flicker of new electric lights. He wracks his brain for something to say, some point of conversation that women like and doesn’t involve the science of animal diets, but before he can force anything out, she’s smiling sadly and turning away.

She goes back to picking her spot at the counter. She downs her shot and hides the aftereffects behind her hand.

He turns back to his corner of the bar, expects someone to fill the places between them and she’ll fade into the background again to be willfully forgotten next week when his ship leaves to carry him back to England. But no one comes.

He finishes his drink, and the glass refills itself. 

Then he’s on his feet, stumbling narrowly around the stools and sloshing his glass only a little in his scuffle. “Erm…” He looks up at her, blinks wildly. She’s grinning like she knows a secret he isn’t privy to.

"S-sorry. Would you...?"

He swallows. He has never asked this particular question. Not in many, many years.

"That is...would you care to dance?"

He says it to her hand, but his eyes meet hers once the words are out and she’s beaming. Positively beaming.

"I'd like that."

He perks, ears and eyes pricking in surprise like an alarmed animal.

She lets him lead her to the floor and take her waist, and all those cotillions and dinners and Ministry banquets flood back to him. 

If he’s a little drunk, it doesn’t matter. And if the smile she gives him is a little amused, he doesn’t mind. The bar has hushed a little, and he hopes it is not because this misplaced peacock of a man has been awarded a dance with Queenie Goldstein’s otherwise staunch and solemn counterpart.

“Who are you?” she asks, and he pretends not to notice how her hand on his shoulder slips a little.

“Newt Scamander. And you are?”

Her gaze darts around, like a skittish doe and to his surprise her cheeks blossom pink like morning glories, here this moment and gone the next. “Tina. Tina Goldstein.”

“Tina,” he repeats, like some secret spell.

The song ends low and woeful then, at the most inopportune time, and Tina pulls away, fingers lingering against his for a moment before she extracts herself entirely.

“I should find my sister…” she says.

“Right. Yes.” 

He means to thank her for the dance, but she is already gone, a bounce of brown hair and a shimmer of beads.

He sees her later, when he and Jacob emerge fuzzy-brained and knackered from the joint. Or rather he hears her sister’s laugh, echoed down the street and back to him. He looks, and she looks, and there’s snow in her hair.

He smiles.


	2. Chapter 2

The snow melts to a cold slush that douses the whole city in misery. He’s used to changing weather of all types, but shivering on Jacob’s creaking, hand-me-down sofa renders him sleepless and grumpy, and the only cure for it is fresh air. Even if the fresh air comes with carrying a Muggle umbrella and keeping it balanced while toting the case and making certain to keep his coat clamped closed when Pickett mewls discontented in his pocket.

He finds a wizard bookshop, and steps inside the warm, sweet-smelling safe haven and leans his umbrella by the door. The elderly owner smiles in acknowledgement behind the counter, and Newt is thankful for the obscurity that remaining unpublished—so far—provides him.

He wouldn’t want to deal with being recognized and prodded today. He’d rather find a corner table and a book or two and be left to his own privacy.

He browses the wall of shelves for a quarter of an hour, plucking out this tome, replacing that one, finally settling on a rather dated compendium to reflect on the section on marmites, a mint-condition copy of _One Thousand Herbs & Magical Fungi_, and _A History of Magic_ , always a favorite. 

He turns for a well-lit corner by a window, and as luck would have it the seat was already taken. By a certain, lovely brunette.

He ducks away back into the aisle he’d come from, clutching his choices to his chest. 

When he dares to peek around the corner again, he finds that he’s gone unnoticed, unobserved in favor of her copy of _Scourers and the Creation of MACUSA_ , her legs stretched along the length of the settee she reclined on, her coat and cloche hat draped over the end near her feet. Her attire is considerably more modest than the first time they’d met, a plain blouse and a grey wool skirt that fanned over her knees, concealing the garters he’d gawked at before.

Quietly as he can, he slithers from his hiding spot, angling his feet as if on the trail of a most skittish beast, careful to be absolutely silent. He chooses the nearest chair at the nearest table and sits silently, careful not to scrape the legs over the weathered floorboards.

He’d learned that she was particularly astute and instinctive when they’d met, so it comes as no surprise that after all this fanfare, she glances up unmoved and says evenly, “Hello again, Mr. Scamander.”

He smiles wryly down at his stack of books and realizes that bereft of the spur of alcohol, it is difficult to meet her gaze.

“Lovely to see you here, Miss Goldstein.”

“You following me?” Her book slants to her lap, her eyes set upon him appraisingly.

“Certainly not,” is all he says, flicking his gaze to hers, watching her observe him head to toe. He wears much the same suit he’d donned at the Blind Pig, but is still bundled in his coat and damp scarf, suddenly overheated under her gaze. He blushes and makes to struggle out of his outer layers while she smiles, amused.

“Lovely weather.” He quips dryly, certain he and his British sensibilities are the only entities that get the joke.

“Must remind you of home.”

His gaze floats across her beautiful face, observing her openly. “Indeed. Perfect weather for a nice cup of tea and a book.”

“Well you’ve got one…How about the other?”

Newt blinks, shocked and altogether certain he’s misconstrued her words. “I’m sorry?”

“Tea,” she repeats, rising from the settee and giving a luxurious stretch that hiked her skirt up a few inches above her knee. Newt’s eyes widen momentarily at the sight. “I’ve been here for a few hours now. I need sustenance. Tea would be lovely.”

He is riveted to his seat, blinking owlishly at her. She jerks her head in the direction of the exit, where he’d only just come from, and hesitantly and dazedly he trips from his chair to follow her. 

By the time they reach the counter, he is lucid enough to offer to pay for her purchase. She seems tempted to refuse at first, but allows it with a tricky, saucy smile that makes him chuckle under his breath.

He does not purchase anything, already possessing all the books he’d pulled within his case, and thanks the shop owner for his allowance of review them—even if he’d only just cracked a cover.

The wet wind is slick and sharp, and tosses the Muggle umbrella off balance while he tries to protect them both, bundled up in his layers once more and she with her collar turned up and a hand clamped over her hat.

He allows the sprinkle of rain on his shoulder and the case if it means that Miss Goldstein is shielded completely, huddled close and gripping the post of the umbrella with both hands. 

She directs them to a warm, dry teashop a few blocks away, and they successfully dodge the slosh of traffic to arrive wind-swept and shivering inside the room that smells of fresh raspberry scones and the heady scent of strong, hallowed black tea.

A plump woman admonishes them for being out in this weather, despite the fact that she’s chosen to be open for business at all, and seats them at a small table at the center of the room, an island to themselves in the space otherwise orphaned of customers.

Tina takes her tea black and wants it steeped to completion, which he allows, but adds cream and sugar to his cup. He should have offered to pour, he thinks in hindsight, sipping greedily at his cup that is mismatched to hers.

“So. Traveller,” she says, setting her cup to the saucer with all the practiced grace of a born and raised Manhattanite.

“What?” he asks, eyes jerking upwards from where he’s been watching her fingers on the handle.

She grins again like she’s got a secret. “You said at the Blind Pig. You travel.”

“Yes.” He doesn’t remember the exact conversation, and tries to scrape it out of whatever hole it been burrowed to in his brain. 

“So what is it you do exactly, Mr. Scamander?”

He glances around for the owner, before scooting his chair in closer. Their knees bump.

“I’ve just completed a year in the field. I’m writing a book about magical creatures. I care for them, rehabilitate them, recuse them, study them and aim to educate others about why we should be protecting them.”

She gives a familiar look, one he’s seen dozens of times before. Mild shock and intrigue, but he guesses hers is genuine and not at the expense of making a laughingstock of him. “Oh. Care for them?”

He nods. “Cure injuries. Remedy any trauma from interacting with humans. Facilitate breeding. Care for abandoned young.”

“And…” She starts. “You keep them…where exactly?”

He nods in the direction of his case, which has been faithfully accompanying them all this time, serving its purpose of being an unassuming vessel of magical transport.

“Can you show me?”

The question makes him start, filled with some sense of intense sense of being _present_ and known, and million of pieces he cannot knit together now.

“Whenever you like,” he responds dazedly, assuredly, and this combination of befuddlement and gratitude makes her grin.

She sips at her tea with a new ease, so he thinks it could be appropriate to ask about her career. Afterall, as curious as she is about him, it cannot compare to his interest in the reticent, captivating performance he had witnessed only a few evenings ago.

She shrugs a shoulder when he asks, and says, “It’s a living. Gotta make money somehow when you’re trying to feed yourself and your sister from scraps on the street. Luckily we both got our mother’s pipes. Queenie’s got the look, I got the ear. We make it work.”

“You’re lovely.” It tumbles from his lips before he can think. “Oh no.” He flushes. “I meant your voice. Well you are…quite nice…as well…”

He trips and tangles and she meets him with a laugh hidden behind her hand, the other crossing the table to cover his fist where it worries his napkin.

“You’re an odd bird, Newt Scamander,” she observes, shaking her head at him.

“Er…yes. I’ve been told.”

They finish their pot and he pays again. She doesn’t protest, for fear of embarrassing him in front of the fussy shop keep. The rain has eased, but it is still bitterly cold, and she walks a little closer beside him—for warmth. He says nothing, only glances down when she takes hold of his elbow, and then he smiles at the pavement.

She is a spectrum of obstinacy and curiosity, and in all these things she is fiercely tender. She contains many colors, and he suspects she has not been offered opportunity to show them all with freedom. She is a thoroughly modern young woman, who harbors many secret stories he can only hope to be brought into, and because of these two characteristics, he knows she is not austerely traditional. Even so, his mother’s hammering of manners and pleasantries twitch within him when he leads her to the door of her brownstone, and prepares his words, tries to arrange them in a way that don’t sound terribly forward.

“Please allow me to see you again.”

She concedes easily. “You may. If you know where to find me,” she riddles, throws a cheeky smile that flashes briefly fond and warm before she slips around the corner and is gone.

He lingers, grins to himself, for there is no task he is more capable at than the one she has commended to him. 

Find her he does, that evening, in the same hidden nightery. When they dance this time, his efforts are rewarded with an unforeseen kiss.


	3. Chapter 3

He returns in April, still bronzed and weary from a stopover in South America. He purchases a weary looking bouquet of violets from a street vendor and leaves her to blink quizzically at the shiny Sickle he presses into her palm, and sets upon his journey to the hideout that is all too easy for a skilled tracker, let alone an unfamiliar foreigner, to find.

The crowd is not thick yet, and so he ducks unseen through some back door he hopes will lead behind the bandstand. It does, and he takes another guess at the set of doors to his left. If he is wrong, whoever answers will most certainly be able to direct him.

He knocks three times, then jerks at his waistcoat, shushes Pickett, and clears his throat.

“Queenie, I told you, just a min…Oh…” The very woman he has hurried to see, the woman who has filled his every daydream—and there have been many—since his departure, yanks open to door and blinks at him in holistic surprise.

Her lips and cheeks are rouged and her hair is set in a neat work of pins, already dressed and showing off those _garters_ again without an ounce of shame.

He clutches clammily at the flowers held behind his back and smiles.

“Hello.”

“Hi,” she breathes, dissolving from square shoulders to soft curves, then reaches to tug the lapel of his greatcoat until he fumbles forward and she can close the door behind him, turning to lean regally against it.

He holds the drooping bouquet aloft, slightly uncertain now, taking in the spew of cosmetics and ladies’ garments that litter the narrow room and the small vanity.

She steps forward, the sound of her patent heels dull and loud in the small space, and takes them, brushing her fingers over his wrist in endearment.

She observes them for only a moment, a tender smile playing at the edges of her lips. “Thank you,” she whispers, and sets them aside.

She lifts a hand to his cheek, the tips of her fingers catching the prickle of weeks-old stubble before she cups his jaw completely and he leans into the touch, letting his eyes fall closed, worry set aside.

“You’ve gotten some sun.” She almost laughs it, and he echoes her, blinking up to her in a gaze he sure is more heated and wistful than he intends, but when she leans into him, press the length of herself against him, and kisses him like he has desperately _longed_ for, he makes no more qualms about it.

Her lips taste flavorless and dry from the lipstick, but he doesn’t mind. He presses back, and he isn’t sure whose efforts it is that make her lean back on one hip, setting herself onto the counter top, pulling him forward to follow. 

He’s winded and gaping when they part. Her lipstick is smudged, and he’s certain he wears some of it when she laughs shallowly and brings a hand to his lapel, tracing the fabric endearingly.

He’s suddenly aware of where he stands, between her thighs, an unsolicited welcome, and he lifts his eyes to her in silent question.

Her face is written in many things: a plea to restore contact, thanks that he is finally and unexpectedly _here_ , and something that is too wholly vulnerable to decipher now. He tips his forehead against hers, and breathes.

“Thank you,” he whispers finally.

“For what?” she husks, and he’s suddenly aware of the fingers stroking at the back of his neck, rhythmic and seeking.

“For you,” he returns, and draws away only marginally as he realizes that he’s utterly defenseless in her presence. That night he’d first set eyes on her, he’d been hopeless. Helpless. Love potions are a dark magic he knows little of, but certainly it is some sort of unexplained enchantment that draws him back to her, that kept the fire of hope alight in his belly even as he traveled. 

She pulls him back like a tide to her orbit, happily taking what little he can give and returning more and more.

He tugs at her right garter absently with listless fingers until she catches up and meets his hand to push it away.

He trembles around her, drawing her in still closer, curving a hand over her hip, brushing past the fringe of beads that makes up her skirt. He lets her draw her lips beneath the crease of his shirt collar, melting the weariness that has grown around him in his absence. Traveling and the quiet of nature is his lifeblood, but there is now familiarity in the churn of automobiles and the crush of city life if it means she is within it, and being away has piqued the notion that something is amiss.

“I have ten minutes,” she mumbles, dark eyes glinting in the yellow light, challenging, and he accepts with his lips on hers.

-

Their act is a little different now. There are four songs, including one in which Tina leads and he sits contentedly with Jacob at a table laden with Gigglewater shots, simply bewitched by the gentle timbre of her voice. She’s a little more confident, a little more gracious with the crowd, those tight and vigilant layers pulled away to reveal someone who is positively solid and strong in who she is, unafraid to let the crowd see. 

They toast when the ladies meet them at the table, and bark their unique laughs after downing their shots in unison. Queenie giggles brightly, lazing against Jacob’s shoulder while a cackle blasts from his belly. Newt decides it is pointless to be self-conscious of the way his teeth show when he laughs openly, and Tina, long practiced, gives a comfortable chuckle. When their eyes meet, he cannot remember a more romantic and captivating sight in all of nature than her smile.

-

He wakes with her the following morning, or rather wakes before her. The city is already awake and bustling, automobiles chugging and honking. But Tina, tuned to the rhythms and cadence of the sprawl, dozes until she wakes naturally. She stretches, and he blushes at the peek of her breast over the silk edge of blanket. 

When she tucks her hands under her chin and gives a coy little smile, he stumbles back to her and he is sure that this will become a well-worn path he travels for many years to come.

In Central Park, dressed in spring colors and clutching her little blue hat to her head, she asks when he will leave next.

Thursday next, he tells her, with a hint of regret.

It is the last thing he expects when she next asks-- _actually asks_ \--to accompany him.

They journey for Port Authority, and the ticketing booth is devoid of any line.

**Author's Note:**

> ( @allscissorsallpaper on tumblr )


End file.
